He called it an “exciting opportunity.”
Excitement fades. The veteran growth-stock manager is taking a hiatus from his diminished brief as CIO for $40 billion-in-assets Dresdner RCM Global Investors in San Francisco. Research chief Ian Vose will step into Price’s job. “I’m going on sabbatical,” Price explains. The 62-year-old money manager can use one. Between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2002, Price’s large-cap growth portfolios -- which brimmed with such highfliers as Cisco Systems, EMC Corp., WorldCom and Yahoo! -- lost 15.7 percent annually, compared with a 14.4 percent average annualized loss for the S&P 500.
Allianz Dresdner Asset Management CEO Joachim Faber won’t comment on Price’s hiatus, but Price insists that it had nothing to do with recent performance woes. He plans to travel to Spain with his son for a few weeks in the spring, but beyond that says he has no itinerary. Price, who remains chairman emeritus at Dresdner RCM, expects to be back at his desk in the fall to develop and co-manage a global macro hedge fund scheduled for launch in early 2004. “There are a number of things that I’ve put off over the years that I’d like to get around to doing,” he says of his impending vacation. “I needed a break, but I’ll be back.”
